Salvaged stained glass windows - When organizers asked St. Paul the Apostle parishioners what
they wished in a fresh church, their inclination was clear: a go back to the
original. The Romanesque-style Catholic chapel in Westerville, using its
columns and arches, cross-shaped floor plan and Jerusalem natural stone
throughout, crammed the bill. Some help was received by the church obtaining
the centuries-old look with stained-glass windows, statues and other items
gathered from parishes finished by the Cleveland diocese starting in 2009.

The Rev. Charles Klinger, pastor at St. Paul, said he
believed just like a "child in a chocolate shop" when he went to a
warehouse where in fact the items were viewed, but he thought the sadness of
the lost churches also. "We believe that it is actually a trust that
people have been directed at keep these treasures from those churches, which
were beautiful and nurtured people spiritually for years really," he said.
“Really is endless that that nurturing can continue steadily to happen
here."

The chapel has 164 house windows and desires to fill all of
them with a blend of glass that's about a century old and new glass made to
complement the portions, said Helmut Naunheimer, the St. Paul development
director. He said he needs about 65 percent of the glass shall result from the
shut churches.

St. Paul symbolizes a pattern: Within the last 10 to 15
years, Catholic-church structures have gone back to the original and
conventional, said David Meleca, leader of the Downtown-based Meleca
Structures. Churches are also getting bigger, seating about typically 1,000
people, as congregations close and combine and a declining variety of priests
offer fewer People.

The common Catholic desires a chapel with marble, mosaics,
stained a glass, symbols and saints, a desire as opposed to the high-modernism
of the '70s and 1960s, said Denis McNamara of the Liturgical Institute of the
University or college of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Illinois.

In the later '90s and 1980s, people started requesting why
churches appeared as if "an aircraft hangar or a Pizza Hut,"
resulting in a go back to the traditional, McNamara said. "A cathedral
building is not merely an auditorium or a meetinghouse, but it's the mixture of
art work and structures to render show the congregation what their heavenly
future can look like," he said. "Intuitively, we realize church is
meant to be this foretaste of heaven."

Lately, Meleca spent some time working on a genuine range of
religious complexes in Ohio, all in traditional styles. Included in this are
St. Paul, St. Joseph Monastery in Portsmouth, the Chapel of the Resurrection in
New Albany, the Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor in Granville and the
Catholic Base Downtown.

St. Paul is one of four new churches built-in the Columbus
diocese before a decade, spokesman George Jones said. The brand new building,
which exposed in 2011, is the 3rd in the 100-year-old congregation's record.
The parish has about 4,500 family members.

The ultimate price of the 1,500-seat chapel was $12 million,
about $2.5 million under budget, thanks a lot partly to competitive rates
during the downturn. The congregation's first cathedral was a wood-frame
building built-in 1931 and the next a modern day building that opened up in
1969.

Windows ranging in cost from $1,800 to $50,000 are being
added as donor’s step of progress and items are laid inside the clear glass
sections that already are installed. Naunheimer said about 90 glass windows
have been installed, and the task is expected by him to be complete in 2015.

Among other items added by shut down churches are a
60-year-old tabernacle to carry the Eucharist, 70-year-old normal water fonts
and 100-year-old mosaics of the Channels of the Mix.

Catholic parishes renovating and building must consider
ceremonial areas of the liturgy as well as cathedral design, Meleca said. At
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Cathedral in Pickerington, for example, the
key aisle is off-center, and renovations shall create symmetry to enforce the
value of the altar, he said.

Some suggestions are organized by U.S. bishops, but a lot of
the look is dictated by local priests and parishioners. Costs, Meleca said,
generally run about $1 million per 100 seats.

McNamara said chapel officials are occasionally asked why so
much money is allocated to a building when maybe it's used instead to help the indigent.
He said everything dates back to the desire to produce a heaven on the planet.

"Churches are general public places and one of the one place
where a person who lives under a bridge can walk in and stay next to a
millionaire and appearance at the wonder of heaven," he said.